Charlie Brown Beyond the Holidays

When you think of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts you probably don't think of "stories". In fact, the problem is most people associate Charlie Brown and Snoopy with Halloween and Christmas and that's about it. When I was younger, I read lots and lots of Peanuts books. I pretty much read anything I could get my hands on. I read compilations of the daily comic strip and I read book versions of the numerous television specials. While the daily strip provided a laugh every day, if you read everyday or read them collected in book you'd find great stories being told like the time Lucy buried Linus' blanket in the backyard and Linus dug up the whole neighborhood looking for it. The animated Peanuts television specials offered a more narrative venue for Snoopy and the gang. While I love the holiday specials, I'm equally as fond of a number of the animated half-hours that didn't have anything to do with a holiday. Sadly, most of these specials have fallen through the cracks and haven't been seen on television in decades, yet alone a DVD release.

So I couldn't be more excited for January 29, 2009 when You're A Good Sport, Charlie Brown breaks the mold and becomes one of the first non-holiday releases from the Peanuts Vault (which is located in Snoopy's dog house, of course). This awesome 1975 tale tells the story of when Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty enter a motocross race against a mysterious challenger known only as The Masked Marvel. If you don't all ready know, look at the DVD cover art pictured here and you can probably guess who the Masked Marvel is! (I love this show so much is was even mentioned in a 1998 episode of The Ed South Show.) And if adding this great show wasn't cool enough for my DVD library, the disc also sports You're The Greatest, Charlie Brown. This is an equally awesome Peanuts outing which debuted in 1979 and has Charlie Brown entering a Decathlon in the Junior Olympics. Can-Not-Wait-my friends! Don't be a lame grown-up...this is an hour of solid television entertainment you should reconnect with!